Appleseed on Blu-ray. Okay, I didn't watch it all, but rather just a couple of scenes to see how the transfer is. The added detail is worthwhile, though it also makes it that much more apparent how the animation simply can't compete with the current state of CG. The audio is as impressive as ever. My first impression is that it's clearer than the DVD, but take my off-the-cuff impression with a grain of salt. Anyway, even if it's not lossless audio, it's still demo-worthy, just like the DVD was.

Just watched/listened to rips of Within Temptation’s “Black Symphony” and Nightwish’s “End of an Era.”

“Black Symphony” was a BD-rip at 720p DTS96.

The video showed a lot of compression/conversion artifacts from the 1080i original but still gave a taste of the quality of the video presentation. Colours when present (there’s a lot of use of de-saturation for effect) are mostly fantastic. Most of the shots are crystal clear but not in the artificial hyper real soap-opera way. Note this is not the actual Blu-ray presentation which must absolutely superb. The only issue I have with the PQ is the shift in clarity depending on which camera is showing.

The audio quality is exceptional. The mixing of the audio is as good as it gets. I don’t think I’ve heard a better live concert mix. The crowd noise is mostly mixed into the surrounds so it sounds like you are in a real concert. The one issue I have is with the vocals which on occasion are not very intelligible. It’s not the mixing level but there are many times I can’t make out what she is saying.

As for the overall presentation I do have a couple quibbles. One is the use of de-saturating the colours when used on the stage performers and not just the audience. Used on the audience it does have a nice effect of highlighting the stage performance. But when used on the performers I just found it annoying. I also got very annoyed at points with the editing. I timed the cuts and they often were every 1 to 4 seconds even during slow passages. While this worked ok for the fast passages I found it just plain irritating during the slow ones.

From a PQ and SQ standpoint this is by far one of if not the best concert video I’ve ever watched/heard and it’s not even the original Blu-ray. The audio places you right in the venue. The video quality on the 134” screen is breathtaking. Sadly IMO it most of the lifelike eye candy which could complete the package making you feel like your in a live concert is lost in haphazard editing. Demo worthy but just misses hitting it out of the park for me.

“End of and Era” was a Xvid (MPEG4) AC-3 standard DVD rip.

The PQ was nothing like the BD above no comparison. Hard to comment on it since the PQ issues could easily have been do to the rip and not the source.

The audio quality wasn’t nearly as dynamic as the BD above but sounded quite well mixed. Most notably the vocals were much more articulate throughout.

I much preferred the editing of this concert. The cuts flowed with the music both in timing and what was being portrayed actually enhancing the performance rather than distracting from it like the BD above. Also fading was used to soften some cuts while adding variety, and overlays of two shots were used to highlight things like the vocalist and dominant instrument at the same time. I also preferred the song selection on this video.

Based on what I’ve seen I plan on getting both of these performances. The “Black Symphony” BD will make an outstanding concert demo taking the place of my “Jethro Tull: Live at Montreux 2003.” However, based on the way it was edited I don’t think I would want to watch this all the way through very often. OTOH the “End of and Era” DVD I could watch over and over again w/o and fatigue since the editing is just so much smother.

Nice take on both. I agree the audio on Black Symphony DTS 24/96 is exceptional. It's still my DVD audio reference to date. Video editing continues IMO to be, I suppose, "toublesome". It's as if the engineers have to, I don't know... engineer. Give these people four weeks, massive amounts to audio/video techie stuff and they go balistic. Best production edit I've seen is Alison Krauss + U.S. 2002 live in Louisville Palace.